Lucky Number Thirteen
by Miiko Ashida
Summary: Roxas leads a charmed existence. [Roxas' first few weeks with the Organization are enough to drive a person mad. He's so freaking lucky. He just wishes the bathroom floor was more of a stranger.] [AxelRoxas, LuxordRoxas, XigbarRoxas]
1. Sick

_And I've got some issues to work through_

_There I go again_

_Pretending to be you_

_Make-believing_

_That I have a soul beneath the surface_

_

* * *

_  
"New kid, huh?"

"What a scrawny waste of space."

"What's your game, kiddo? Go fish?"

"Ah, leave off. Maybe he can kick all your asses."

The last speaker, a redhead with too much garish eye makeup, throws his arm nonchalantly across Roxas' thin shoulders, but Roxas is already in a foul mood so it's less comforting and more creepy. It doesn't help that everybody in the room is leering at him. Menacing, every one, especially the "friendly" redhead.

"I'm Axel," he adds with a wink as though it's some big favor, divulging his name.

"I don't care," Roxas tells him with cold honesty.

A dirty blonde leaning against the wall whistles. "Ooh, I think you just got _frostbite_, Axel. Maybe he doesn't play on your team, if you know what I mean?" He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and Roxas shoots him a glare.

"You're a moron."

"No, I'm Demyx." The guy beams like he didn't hear a word of the insult.

Axel has taken the kid's distraction to slide the invasive arm down to around his waist, and leans into him like some sort of crutch. One shot across the bow: Roxas pulls back his fist. Apparently it isn't very threatening, because instead of backing off, Axel scoffs. "Oh-ho! Kid's got fight in hi–"

Roxas lays him flat and gets in a solid knee to the general area of Demyx's crotch before the others are on him.

--

Each floor of Castle Oblivion is supposedly the personal domain of its resident, but Roxas quickly discovers that this is a privilege to be earned, not a right.

When he wakes up to the cold of his room, several somethings throb and he immediately wish he'd just gotten hazed submissively, but more important at the moment is the fact that he's not alone in the room. Axel, eye swelling and an angry violent mark already showing on his jaw, is sitting at the edge of his bed.

Roxas must be staring, because Axel says, "I don't look half as bad as you, trust me." He gives Roxas this cheeky little grin and scoots forward. "After what you pulled earlier, you'll need a friend and it isn't likely to be anybody in the welcoming committee. Whaddaya say?"

Skin still tight with pain and bruises, Roxas summons the strength to pick Axel's very forward hand off of his thigh. "Like fuck, asshole."

"Okay," Axel says amenably, perfectly calm and Roxas wants to punch his face in again but he steps away into a portal that came out of nowhere, leaving Roxas in the dark.

--

Roxas' next visit is from a peroxide-blonde whom he recognizes as having made the 'go fish' comment. The room is still dark, but this man doesn't just _appear_ creepily like Axel, sitting there and watching him sleep for – fuck, just how long _was_ Axel there? Like a normal person, he uses the door, even if he doesn't have the manners to knock.

He sits down on the bed, too (that's when Roxas realizes there aren't actually any chairs or other furnishings), and ruffles Roxas' hair good-naturedly. "So, how about that game of go fish?" he asks, pulling a deck of cards out of nowhere. Roxas decides maybe the man will go away if he's ignored long enough.

It sort of works because eventually he gets up and goes to the door, pausing there.

"I'm Luxord, and I just thought you should remember that a Nobody who shuns even other Nobodies has no one at all."

Then Luxord shut the door behind him and Roxas is in the dark.

--

He's bent over double, retching in the sink – his bathroom is sparse and white, like everything else on his floor, and maybe it's all the white that made him sick, or did he do it to himself? – and Axel pops out of the wall. He chokes, cursing and stumbling away backwards, but Axel just reaches out a hand to steady him.

"Sorry, I'd kind of hoped to walk in on a different kind of bathroom ritual," the redhead jokes, grinning obscenely. There's a half-hearted effort on Roxas' part to flip him off, overwhelmed at the last moment by another wave of nausea.

Instead of making a witty comeback, his face disappears beneath the toilet bowl's rim.

Axel kneels next to him, holding his hair back, and when Roxas is finished there's another portal and the cool hands on his temples are gone. Then he throws up again.

--

Luxord sort of catches him or maybe Roxas lets himself be caught, but either way they're in the same stairwell at the same time and Luxord's grip on Roxas' arm is just enough stronger than Roxas' will to break it.

"Are you still a loner?"

"Are you trying to do me a favor?"

"You're lonely, aren't you?"

"...Shut up."

It occurs to Roxas that maybe the cold was making him sick – cold walls, cold floors, cold white everywhere, cold pit where his heart should be – and Luxord's lips are the warmest thing he's found in the castle so far, and maybe he'll get better by just giving up. It's the strangest thing, though; he feels sicker under the sharp tug of Luxord's hands in his hair, even with the warmth of his lips everywhere (they're in a goddamn stairwell, and some one could come along any minute), and Axel's cool hands on his temples made it go away.

--

"Your talented mouth going to get you out of this one?"

"Shut the fuck up."

"Ooh. Well, you can't bribe my silence with a couple good fucks. That must be hard for you to understand."

"Bitter, ugly old bitch," Roxas mutters just loud enough for her to hear. Her face doesn't change at all, but she grinds her heel into the top of his boot. Now here's something he has a little control over; he knows how to get to _one_ person in this castle, instead of everyone else owning him. "I bet you've never gotten a fuck at all, have you?"

She leaps at him and it's worse than Demyx, Luxord, and Xigbar all together on that first day, because Larxene knows how to make sure he's conscious for all of it.

--

Luxord's heat is starting to burn and Roxas still gets sick.

He thinks about humbling himself in exchange for the comfort of Axel's cool hands again but instead he thinks there must be another solution and since his body isn't worth anything anyway he can give it away to anyone he pleases.

Marluxia flat-out turns him down, but Xigbar finds the prospect vaguely interesting and _fuck_, Roxas hates everyone in this castle _so fucking much_. His shoulders shake like everything trembles when he's stretched out under Xigbar's lunging thrusts, and his head spins and he's still finding himself huddled over the toilet.

Something about the rough way Xigbar uses him, doesn't even pretend he's enjoying it, (it's just a release, everything's just trying to release something else so that thing can roll downhill and build and build and build until it crashes into –) is a sickness on its own, and maybe it will devour the other illness. Or maybe it'll just take what's left of him. Roxas doesn't care anymore, if he ever really cared, so he lets it go.

It turns out distancing his body by ruining it and handing it off to others isn't distancing the sickness at all and one day Roxas wakes up sick, sore angry and lonely all at the same time.

Where the fuck are those hands now?

* * *

_You might say it's self destructive_

_But, you see, I'd kick the bucket_

_Sixty times before I'd kick the habit_


	2. Misstep

_Can't you just fix it for me?_

_It's gone berzerk_

_Oh, fuck, I'll give you anything_

_If you can make the damned thing work_

* * *

"Hey, kiddo. Where've you been?"

"Nowhere. And don't call me that."

Luxord grins, nodding acquiescence; he tips the shot of bourbon cradled between his fingers toward Roxas. It's pure chance that their assignments should cross paths, and pure bad luck that it would be in a gamblers' bar like this. It puts Luxord in his element, and knocks Roxas clean out of all his confidence. "Fair enough, _Roxas_. Axel's been looking for you, you know."

"He doesn't need to look."

"Not true. You're quite difficult to find when you want to be."

"Have you been looking?"

A smirk creases the corners of Luxord's mouth, laugh lines deep with pretended congeniality, (and Roxas remembers the not-quite-soft scrape of close-cropped beard against his throat, stomach, thigh…) and he says, "_I_ wouldn't have to."

Then he pats the barstool next to him, and Roxas sits obediently, with an uncomfortable, immediate and unquestioning compliance that makes him churn internally. No one should have power over him. He owns himself, doesn't he? Luxord sees the disgust in Roxas' eyes, and puts a broad hand on the boy's shoulder.

He grins at the humor of what he's about to say. "Look, it's supposed to be a secret, but…" Glancing around conspiratorially, he leans close to Roxas' ear (that infuriating tickle-scratch of beard that brings the memories of –) and whispers, "I really do like you. I'm your friend, Roxas, even if nobody else is and even if you aren't mine. And I won't ask more than that of you." (– the first warmth, passion, _love?_ of this existence)

It's too much to ask, _just friendship_. Certainly, Roxas would have an easier time understanding _just fucking_, or could pretend there was no 'friends' to _friends with benefits_. But just friends, with no other masking details…he has to face it, the meaning of friendship. What is it to be a friend? Luxord thinks he's being gentle, being kind, but he's torturing Roxas.

It's just not something he can do.

The barstool clatters to the ground and Luxord sighs and orders another drink.

--

"Come _on_," shouts Roxas, hands curling into fists. Xigbar just shakes his head, sprawled across the bed and naked except for a sheet draped around his hips.

"_You_ 'come on', Roxas. Don't be unreasonable. You know that's not what we're both here for, don't you? Just come over here and I'll make you forget your silly question."

Humiliation, fury, and something like the feeling of holding-back-tears burns in Roxas' face, but he won't give up. He knew it was stupid, knew Xigbar wouldn't tell him, but he had to ask. To ask someone whose answer meant nothing to him but what it was. Someone who didn't matter, themself. "No. Tell me! You remember; what is friendship?"

"I'm not interested, Roxas." Xigbar shoots him a half-lidded look, and Roxas knows what he's supposed to do but for some reason he (can't no won't and blonde hair and laughter-lines it's all I'm asking I don't _want_ anything from you) doesn't do it and he just leaves. Because he feels like it.

--

Somewhere between his all-time low and the far-off light of getting 'better' the bathroom floor overtakes him and he wakes up shivering. He isn't cold at all.

Sick is something you'd think he'd get used to, but it hurts the same every time and he still curls in on himself, pain shooting up from his stomach and heat passing over his body, choking him, and his head feeling too heavy for his shoulders, no wait, like it's going to float away, pounding and pounding until he wants to cry but he can't because he's a Nobody and 'sick' isn't really sick at all it's just (from him, the white, cold, heat, too much pressure building) in his head.

Barely, Roxas bears up to go to the toilet and grip its rim with white-knuckled hands and hope it's over soon. His knees are shaking and (he knows, just _knows_, if he'd been good and just gone to Xigbar like he was supposed to it would all be alright, and he's sick because he didn't care about _supposed to_, for once) his back hurts and maybe he's dying. And then Axel is next to him, and his stupid, painted face almost looks worried, and he holds Roxas up until it's over, but this time he doesn't leave. Instead he wets a cloth in the sink and mops Roxas' brow, and he kisses the top of Roxas' head. Now, Roxas knows how this one is supposed to go: he should hit him – no, wait, he should go with him to bed because isn't that what (he's good for) Axel wants? It's what everybody wants (Luxord didn't take it, _just friends_) and he hates them all. But he's too tired to lash out, and Axel is (too good) not good enough for the other thing, so instead Roxas falls asleep against him because he can't do anything else.

Axel lays him in his bed and goes out through the door.

--

It's a day later when Roxas wakes up from dreams about a girl he's never met and a boy who looks just like him and another boy who wouldn't reach out any farther for his hand. The room is dark and quiet, and Roxas is actually alone. Axel isn't there. Luxord isn't there. Xigbar never came to Roxas' room.

Even though it's lonely, it's a little peaceful, too. Something inside him is still asleep, or maybe just not speaking.

And Roxas finds himself missing the confusion and the sickness and everything else that made up his days because it proved he was real, and this equilibrium proves nothing.

--

So now he's avoiding Xigbar, because (of how Xigbar made him feel about himself) 'hate' just isn't a strong enough word for how he feels about the man, and he's avoiding Luxord because he's not ready to think about 'just friends' yet, and he's avoiding Axel because Axel makes the sick feeling go away and sick is real and he wants more than anything, the only thing he wants, is to be real.

But hiding doesn't work so well. Lexaeus finds him in Xaldin's library; Larxene chases and beats him out from behind a topiary in Marluxia's atrium; and Zexion has made a game of telling the others where Roxas is, for the sole purpose of enjoying the other boy's torment.

There's no safe place, because he's made an enemy out of everyone, but there's one person who would save him if he could only just remember who.

* * *

_Hello I love you,_

_Won't you tell me your name_

_Hello, hello, hello, hello_

_I need you now_


End file.
